Something Old

 Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published four or more years ago.

“KIM” by Rudyard Kipling (first published as a serial in American and British magazines 1900-01; first published in book form 1901)

           

         I have never read the works of Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) with close, critical attention. Of course I had the Just So Stories read to me when I was a child and later I read them to my own children. Of course, as a child, I read the two Jungle Books (and have seen the exploits of Mowgli distorted in various films, including the Disney cartoon version). But I know about Captains Courageous only from films (Spencer Tracy dying nobly to Freddie Bartholemew’s tears) and I never read the novel. As an adult I have occasionally enjoyed Kipling’s verse  - especially the robust poems with historical settings - and some of his short stories, including the novella The Man Who Would Be King. Equally often, though, the poems and short stories have repelled me when Kipling goes all jingo with the clear assumption that the British Empire must be the greatest achievement in human organisation. This was the barrier which made me, as an adult, shun reading his full-length novels. I had the clear impression that whatever he had to say would be badly dated and sometimes repugnant.

But recently I decided to give his best-known novel a go.

When academics want to boost Kipling’s reputation and restore him to the canon, they often choose as his masterpiece Kim (in very much the way that academic boosters of H.G.Wells choose Tono-Bungay). It was the last of the four full-length novels Kipling wrote, and the one to which he seems to have given most thought.

But there is a problem here. Is this picaresque panorama of India really a novel for the adult reader? Or is it better interpreted as an adventure story for older children?

Kim is certainly picaresque. Kimball O’Hara, or “Kim”, neglected orphan son of a negligent Irish soldier in the British Army, is a fleet-footed 12- or 13-year-old who is the “Little Friend of all the World” in the bazaars and backstreets of Lahore – possibly as a thief, certainly as a trickster and as somebody with keen wits, great cunning, and the abilty to charm his way into people’s good graces. To put it in modern jargon, he is a “street smart” kid. Kim has grown up more Indian than British, with Indian views of the world and awareness of all the various customs and religions that surround him. Wanting to move on, he chooses to join the Tibetan Teshoo Lama, who is searching for a sacred river where his soul will be be cleansed. Kim becomes the lama’s “chela”, or disciple, and the two of them head off down the Main Trunk Road on their journey. But the first big jolt is Kim’s finding the Irish regiment (the fictitious “Mavericks”) to which his father belonged. He has papers to prove this connection. So young Kim is dragooned into a Western (British) education, going to school and being groomed for service in the  British Raj.

This is the central tension in the novel – between Kim’s Indian identity and the British identity that he is being taught. On the one hand, there is the paternal Colonel Creighton who at first wants to make a soldier of him, but then understands that the boy can be put to better use. On the other hand, there is the Tibetan lama, a kind of substitute father and the only character whom Kim ever says he loves. Frequently, by his schooling and by his British mentors, Kim is separated from the lama; but he always finds ways of reconnecting with him, and the lama’s search for Buddhist spiritual enlightenment runs parallel with Kim’s search for his own identity. What exactly is he?  Sometimes in the novel, when his mixed identity confuses him, he asserts his uniqueness or individuality by saying “But I am Kim, Kim, Kim!”

People they meet in the story give a panorama of India, almost a survey of “types”. There is the Pathan horse-dealer, a Muslim (or “Mohammedan” as Kipling would say) Mahbub Ali. There is the seller of gems and odd goods Lurgan. There is the Bengali Hurree Babu, perhaps the character who comes closest to caricature, with his desire to be an F.R.S. (Fellow of the Royal Society) and his almost subserviant attitude to his British masters, as if Kipling is mocking those Indians who aspire to be British. There is the prostitute (discreetly identified as such) who helps disguise Kim for purposes of the plot. And, late in the novel, there is the curious episode of the Woman of Shamlegh, deserted by a British soldier who said he would return to her, but never did.

This is one major point to note about the novel. While Kipling is often busy describing bazaars and market places and the Great Trunk Road, and schools and barracks and the Himalayas, he is not blind to the faults of the subcontinent’s British overlords. Kipling was mainly brought up in India and spent much of his life there. There are autobiographical elements in Kim – especially when Kipling describes British schools and institutions which he knew. Some supporting characters are based loosely on real people. Any postcolonial criticism we may have of the novel must be tempered by the fact it was written by a man who knew India well, and who was capable of satirising some aspects of the British Raj.

Kim’s encounter with formal Western education comes across as a boy having his head stuffed with useless and irrelevant information. Then there is the big matter of religion. Kipling comments: “All India is full of holy men stammering gospels in strange tongues; shaken and consumed in the fires of their own zeal; dreamers, babblers and visionaries; as it has been from the beginning and will continue to the end.” (Chapter 2) This could seem, in isolation, a Westerner’s dismissive view of the mainly Hindu population. And yet Western religion is treated even more ironically. When the regiment’s boisterous, and somewhat bullying, Anglican chaplain Mr Bennett first meets Kim, Kipling remarks : “Bennett looked at him with the triple-ringed uninterest of the creed that lumps nine-tenths of the world under the title ‘heathen’ ”. (Chapter 5) Later, there is some farcical to-ing and fro-ing between Mr Bennett and the Catholic chaplain Father Victor about where Kim should be schooled (it’s an Irish regiment, so of course it also has a Catholic chaplain). As it happens, Father Victor wins out and Kim goes to the Catholic St Xavier’s school. Ultimately, in the novel’s closing, Kipling endorses the lama’s spiritual quest, no matter how naïve the Tibetan sage may sometimes appear. The “river” the lama sought is a vision of the Great Soul that unites all things. This Buddhist concept is presented with a respect that, in this novel, is nowhere given to Christianity.

And yet, in the character of Kim himself, there is still this tension between mysticism and pragmatism. When Kim, as “chela”, is trying to learn the lama’s Buddhist sense of detachment from wordly things, Kipling remarks : “Obediently, then, with bowed head and brown finger alert to follow the pointer, did the chela study; but when they came to the Human World, busy and profitless just above the Hells, his mind was distracted; for by the roadside trundled the very Wheel itself, eating, drinking, trading, marrying, and quarrelling – all warmly alive.” (Chapter 12) The “Wheel”, the lama’s Buddhist concept of pointlessly repetitive human life which does not reach a higher plane, is trumped by the immediacy of sounds and smells and colours to which both the Hindu and Western parts of Kim respond.

Kim is riddled with suggestions that its protagonist inhabits simultaneously two separate worlds. As a typical example, there is this moment where the boy, having run away from school, is as easily able to accommodate himself to the street urchin’s life as to the school dormitory:  “Kim lay behind the little knot of Mahbub’s followers, almost under the wheels of a horse-truck, a borrowed blanket for covering. Now a bed among brickbats and ballast-refuse on a damp night, between overcrowded horses and unwashen Baltis, would not appeal to many white boys; but Kim was utterly happy. Change of scene, service, and surroundings were the breath of his little nostrils, and thinking of the neat white cots of St. Xavier’s, all arow under the punkah gave him joy as keen as the repetition of the multplication-table in English.” (Chapter 8)

At which point, I have to come to what is, for me, the great stumbling block in appreciating this novel. In the end, such sequential narrative as this picaresque work has, is still a hymn to British imperialism. During his years of schooling, and up to the time he is 16 or 17, Kim is being discreetly trained as a British informant or spy, much valued because the little scamp can readily disguise himself and blend in with Indian crowds. This is the thread which holds the “plot”, such as it is, together. When Kim is still too young to know why, Colonel Creighton tells him : “Yes, you must learn how to make pictures of roads and mountains and rivers – to carry these pictures in thy eye till a suitable time comes to set them on paper…” (Chapter 7) He is being taught to memorise topography, landscapes and the movements of anti-British forces, which in this case means Russians attempting to infiltrate Afghanistan. (Small details suggest the novel is set in the early1890s, just before Britain fought another Afghan War.) We learn early that the horse-dealer Mahbub Ali is an asset of the British, passing on military information to Colonel Creighton. Mahbub Ali is also Kim’s chief mentor, telling him about the “Great Game” that is being played between the British Empire and the Russian Empire. There is the memory game (apparently now often known as “Kim’s game”) in which the seller-of-gems Lurgan trains Kim, to sharpen his powers of observation and make himself immune to the mesmerism which enemy spies might practise on him. And the climax of all this comes when Kim saves Mahbub Ali from Russian spies in the Himalayas and foils the Russians in their devilish plans.

To this you have to add the moments where Kipling puts into the mouths of Indian characters sentiments that would be most congenial to British readers of his day. A sabre-carrying Indian soldier describes thus the causes of the so-called “Indian Mutiny”, which had happened little more than thirty years before the time the novel is set: “The Gods, who sent it for a plague, alone know. A madness ate into all the Army, and they turned against their officers. That was the first evil, but not past remedy if they had then held their hands. But they chose to kill the Sahibs’ wives and children. Then came the Sahibs from over the sea and called them to most strict account.” (Chapter 3). Such statements, supposedly coming from an Indian, neatly absolve the British of all blame in this upheaval.

From my perspective, all this compromises the novel’s generally large-hearted and sympathetic view of the Indian peoples. They are jolly decent fellows but they are still there is serve Britain’s strategic and imperial interests. To read Kim and then read Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is to understand how far ahead of Kipling Conrad was in seeing the negative side of imperialism, and as a result Conrad’s work still reads as more modern in mentality than Kipling’s.

Then there are those other questions I raised early in this notice: Is Kim really a novel for the adult reader? Or is it better interpreted as an adventure story for older children?

As an adventure story, it moves at a very slow pace, dwelling at length on the characters whom Kim and the lama encounter and reminding us only every so often  of Kim’s training in espionage. When it comes, the climactic foiling of the Russian spies – the whole purpose of Kim’s training - is dealt with very briefly, confined to Chapter 13 and almost as a throwaway. Couple this with much elevated or recherche vocabulary, and with Kipling’s habit of using the obsolete second-person singular (“thou”, “thee”, “thy”, “thine”) in conveying the speech of Indians, and I think most modern adolescents and children would have a very hard time reading Kim, much as it may still sometimes be given as a present by indulgent parents or aunts and uncles. Extract the “plot” and you have an adventure story such as could be filmed – if one dared to ignore current views on imperialism. But an extracted plot is not the novel itself. It is, of course, quite possible that Edwardian children, over a century ago, embraced Kim heartily. But as a book for older children, its time seems to me to be quite over. And I haven’t even noted all the irony that would fly over the heads of children, not to mention Kipling’s endearing habit of alluding, circumlocutiously, to foul language (clearly meant to be effing and blinding) without actually using it.

As for adult readers, I think they would relish much of Kipling’s prose, powers of description and sly humour. But they would still read Kim largely as a period piece.

My own punchline is that Kim is doubtless the most compassionate and knowing novel about India that could be written by a committed British imperialist.

Random Footnotes: Before I get torn apart by dedicated Kipling-ites, I will note three things: (i) I am aware that Kim is still immensely popular with adult readers, and makes it into various of those awful “Hundred Best Books of the 20^th Century” lists that you still come across – including ones compiled by the Guardian, Modern Books etc. (ii) I am also aware that, with reservations, some modern Indian writers have praised it, while still seeing it as a very British imperial view of things. (iii) Yes, it has been filmed a number of times – a Hollywood version in 1950, a British TV version in 1984 and – believe it or not – a German version more recently. I have not seen any of these films, but apparently all three played up the “adventure” (what I called the “extracted plot”). Certainly in the 1950 one, but also in one of the later ones, nearly all major roles were played by Westerners under brown “Indian” make-up. Would you believe Errol Flynn as Mahbub Ali in the 1950 version? And Peter O’Toole as the lama in the 1984 version? Strewth.